Huge clouds of smoke from numerous fires in Victoria billowed over the state and into neighboring New South Wales on December 7, 2006. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows active fire locations that MODIS detected outlined in red. Brownish-gray smoke hides the mountains where the fires were burning. Much of the area is park and reserve land, and it is rugged and remote, making control difficult. Fire behavior was extreme; according to fire officials, heat generated by the fires caused strong updrafts that picked up embers and spread them in all direction. Fire activity was predicted to intensify over the weekend.

The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides twice-daily images in a variety of resolutions and formats.